" In light of Ignatius' 'Two Standards' and 'The Mystries Done From The Garden To The House Of Annas', at any moment we can be Judas or Peter, a Christian life can be a fine line."

Friday, May 3, 2013

China’s Most Famous—And Most Powerful—Catholic Bishop Has Died.

China’s most famous—and most
powerful—Catholic bishop has died. When I last saw him in 2011, I knew “Old beloved
friends.” He had not seen those faces in more than six long and eventful
decades.

He asked me to bring more photographs of “Catholic Shanghai before the
Communists”; I do have more images to give him, but now he is perhaps seeing
the real faces of his “beloved friends,” and I will file them away for
posterity. Bishop Aloysius Jin Luxian, SJ (1916-2013), was one of the most
gentle and charming people I have met, and he was also among the most enigmatic,
and as I thumb through his dossier I vacillate between admiration,
disagreement, speculation, and sometimes disappointment.

As I said in my
2010 interview with Bishop Jin for Ignatius Insight, with Jin there are “no
easy answers.” I would like to offer a few remarks here about why Bishop Jin’s
recent death, at the age of 97, is probably one of the most noteworthy events
in the history of Catholicism in China.

then
that age was finally catching up with Shanghai’s remarkable and indefatigable
prelate. As we sat together, I handed him a pile of rare photographs of him and
his fellow Jesuits, images that dated before his arrest in 1955. Pausing for
some time as he looked over the first photograph, he said in a low voice,

About Me

I am not a Jesuit, nor am I a cleric. I spent about 5 years under the spiritual direction of a Jesuit, 3 of those years in a weekly directed retreat in everyday life. The profound impact that the Society and the Excercises had upon my life, resulted in me, trying to deal with that impact in some way by sharing my view of Jesus Christ with others. My intention is to pull together Jesuitical and Catholic subjects that interest me. I was born on the feast day of St. Paul Miki, S.J.. I am the father of three small children and an infant, I am married to a great wife.